About the Wetlands Alliance

The Wetlands Alliance is an association of established agencies committed to creating new and innovative poverty focused development initiatives. The Alliance partners believe that poverty alleviation works best when interventions are locally led, actively engage the people involved and treat wetlands and aquatic resources as a natural entry point for poverty alleviation initiatives in South East Asia. It is on these resources the poorest people in the region depend most.

The Alliance currently engages almost 50 partner organizations in the Mekong River region. At provincial and district level, local partners develop and implement the work and are the direct beneficiaries of the capacity development efforts supported by the regional partners. The complementary strengths of the different partners offers a regional pool of knowledge and expertise.

People living in communities are also part of the Alliance and participate in the process of creating the development plans that affect them.

The Alliance partners are in dialogue with a number of regional and international agencies. These ‘dialogue partners’ are less engaged in the day-to-day work, but play an important role in monitoring the impact of Alliance work and informing strategy.

The Alliance is currently operating in eight geographic locations in four countries. As awareness of the Alliance grows, new partners are expressing interest in joining.

From an initial membership of only a few partners, the Alliance has expanded into a regional network of government agencies, and NGOs in the four countries.

Currently, the Alliance consists of the regional partners;

• Asian Institute of Technology (AIT)
• CORIN-ASIA
• World Fish Center (WorldFish)
  
• World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), and

almost 50 local partners in Cambodia, Lao PDR, Thailand and Vietnam.

Millions of people in small communities throughout Southeast Asia depend in some way on what wetlands produce. Wetlands is a natural entry point for poverty alleviation initiatives in the Greater Mekong Subregion. The Alliance focuses on four main areas of common interest; local development and management, aquatic resources, institutional policy change and securing the resources needed to use the capacity developed.

The Alliance links up to regional and international organisations and initatives to help these to reach down to the local level and facilitate inputs from local level actors to regional workshops and meetings. These regional dialogue partners include agencies such as FAO, SEAFDEC, MRC, SEI, etc. and initiatives such as Mangroves for the Future.